Evva Holt didn’t let anything stop her in her 85 years of living — not the death of her mother when she was 6, nor the fall from a horse that left her physically handicapped.

As for the glass ceiling she faced while growing up in the 1930s, she earned two master’s degrees anyway and enjoyed a long career as a real estate agent and dietician.

Right up until she died at age 85 while fleeing the Camp Fire, Holt was busy on Facebook, shopping online and beating opponents at pinochle, Relative Insanity and Farkle.

“She was very smart,” said Linda Dighton, her oldest daughter. “Even though she walked a little slower, her brain was always sharp.”

Holt spent her early years in Wyoming, where she fell off a horse and broke her left arm, her younger daughter Nancy Oliver said. Because the country doctor had put her cast on too tight, Holt lost the use of her left hand, she said.

“It didn’t stop her at all from raising three little kids, though,” including the two girls and a son, Oliver said.

After Holt’s mother died, her father moved the family to Oakland when she was about 8. Holt went on to earn master’s degrees in nutrition and communications, became a Realtor and then a dietitian for Children’s Hospital Oakland, Wheels on Meals, and later in life for a jail in Placerville. Oliver said she fed the family a healthy diet, including brown rice well before whole grains became mainstream. She worked until she was 75.

In the years after her husband died, Holt moved a few times to be near one daughter or the other, eventually following them both to Paradise, where they retired in 2014. Holt lived in her own apartment at Feather Canyon Gracious Retirement Living and made many friends there.

Her daughters and their husbands visited often, and Holt, who loved music, particularly enjoyed when they would sing for the whole retirement home. She also spent time reading at least three newspapers a day, was fascinated by politics and disliked President Donald Trump, Oliver said.

“She proudly wore her Hillary button,” Oliver said.

Dighton said her mother was a perfectionist and “demanded a lot” of her daughters. But that drove Dighton to do well in college and climb the ladder working for the Social Security Administration.

Holt always seemed to capably take charge of her own life, including when it came to her first name. Originally, it was “Eva” with one ”v,” which people often pronounced with a long e, as in evening. To make sure they used the correct pronunciation — the “e” in her name is meant to sound like the first e in the word “everyone” — she added the second “v,” Oliver said.

Holt’s death devastated her daughters, who also lost their houses in the fire. Neither daughter plans to rebuild in Paradise.

Tracey Kaplan is a reporter for the Bay Area News Group based at The Mercury News. A former courts reporter, she is now reporting primarily on consumer issues, and welcomes any tips/suggestions, especially on how to make ends meet in the Bay Area. Watch for a series this summer on her personal solution to the housing crisis -- spending her nest egg on turning a cargo van into what will eventually be her full-time home. For more info, see @itsavanlife on Instagram and our Facebook group, Full House: Inside the Bay Area housing shortage.